Pandora(44)

When he told Miss Blake he has read widely, he spoke the truth. What he has not told her is that his knowledge was acquired only in recent years, during the long painful weeks he stayed with Cornelius’ father. How he had poured himself into antiquarian history! How he used that knowledge to help stamp out the memory of what had come before! Unbidden, the darkness of the Blake basement pops into his mind’s eye, and on its tail—

Edward grips the chair arm, closes his eyes against the memory. For a long moment he sits there, head against the back, breathes deeply as he was instructed to do when it all threatened to become a little too much. But then there is a knock on the door, and Edward’s stomach drops.

‘Mr Lawrence?’

Edward looks dully at Fingle’s warped shape through the glass panelling. He sighs heavily, sits straighter in his seat.

‘Come in.’

There is a pause, a fumble at the handle, and then the overseer is in, the door shut behind him, and he is peering at Edward across the candlelight.

‘I wondered how you’d got on with the Helmsley order.’

‘Yes.’ Edward points to a stack of books on the small cabinet near the door. ‘Finished yesterday.’

‘Wonderful,’ Fingle says, picking them up one by one, turning them over in his hands as he does. ‘These are beautiful.’ He hesitates. ‘Your skill has improved considerably over the years.’

‘Well. I didn’t have a choice, did I?’

Fingle meets Edward’s hard gaze and immediately looks away again. He clears his throat, rubs his thumb against the bridge of his nose.

‘Who was the young lady who visited you a few days ago.’

It is a question but spoken without the upward lilt, and while Dora Blake is not a subject Edward wishes to discuss with Fingle she is better than the alternative, so he tries for a brighter tone, grasps the change of tack. What happened was not, Edward reminds himself, Fingle’s fault.

‘Her name is Blake. She came to ask my advice on some antiquities in her possession.’

‘Oh. I see. I thought that perhaps she was your …’

He knows what Fingle means to say, and the unspoken word – sweetheart – sends Edward warm at his collar.

‘I barely know her.’

‘Well, now. It might be good for you. Considering.’

‘Considering?’

Fingle fidgets again. ‘Well, now,’ he repeats, placating. ‘We all know how close you and Mr Ashmole are. It would be good for you to spend time with someone different for a change. Someone more … Well, you’ve led such a sheltered life.’ Edward stares at him. Fingle clears his throat. ‘This came for you a moment ago.’

The overseer takes from his waistcoat a crisp-looking note, and as he passes it over the table Edward feels a tightening in his throat. There, plain to see, is the Society of Antiquaries’ seal.

Taking it he snaps the red wax, nervously unfolds the letter, stares down at it in disbelief.

‘Anything wrong?’ Fingle asks as Edward gets up, wordlessly, and reaches behind the overseer for his coat.

Mr Richard Gough – the director himself – has summoned him.



On his arrival at Somerset House, Edward makes his way at speed toward the director’s office, the tap-tap-tapping of his heels on the parquet floor attracting the unwanted attention of two bespectacled old men who shoot him looks of annoyance, as if he has no right to be walking with such loud purpose at two o’clock in the afternoon on a cold and dreary Wednesday.

Once he has reached the top of the ornately decorated staircase, Edward passes through a wide arch flanked either side with two monstrous-looking gilded amphorae. He continues right – not straight on which would take him through to the Royal Society that shares the anteroom (much to Gough’s chagrin) with the Society of Antiquaries – to find Cornelius waiting for him in the large meeting room.

‘What is it?’ Edward asks, shrugging out of his coat.

‘Do not panic,’ his friend warns with half-amusement, half-something else, taking the coat from him and hanging it on a nearby hook. ‘We have had the clay sample analysed, that’s all.’

Edward stares. ‘And?’

‘The results are … interesting,’ Cornelius finishes, and at Edward’s questioning look, he shows him through into Gough’s office.

The room is not as large as Edward expected, but certainly it is as grand. Taking up most of the cramped space is a cavernous leather-top desk; on the desk, a decanter filled with claret-coloured liquid sits between two glasses on a circular silver tray; to the left of the desk, a bookcase crammed full of the Society publications that always gives Edward a thrill when he reads their spines – Vetusta Monumenta and Archaeologia – and to the right, a small fire crackles beneath a narrow fireplace above which hangs a particularly impressive medieval map in a gold-gilt frame.

Gough himself – an ageing man of squat stature – sits behind the desk, indicates Edward be seated with an incline of his bewigged head.

‘Mr Lawrence.’

Edward seats himself in the chair opposite Gough, and as Cornelius takes position in front of the bookcase the director produces from the desk drawer the glass vial of powdered terracotta Edward retrieved from the pithos. Very carefully, Gough places it between them where it looks small and innocuous, stranded on leather the colour of pine.